After my last attempt at beer bread I decided to try again, this time with fresh baking powder. This time I made the plain variety from Bake at 350 using Anchor Christmas Ale:

I only baked the bread for 50 minutes at this time, in the hope that would make the bread fluffier with a softer crust.  The bread was somewhat less dense this time but still had a rather hard crust. I’m not certain why the crust is so hard but the bread is pretty tasty warm out of the oven: